TSARITSYN-STALINGRAD

TSARITSYN-STALINGRAD
AND PEASANTS, honest toiling citizens of the whole of Russia! Days of the greatest hardships have arrived. There rs not enough
bread in the towns and in many of the gubernias of our exhausted
country. The toiling population is worried over its fate. The enemies
of the people are taking advantage of the difficult straits to which they
have driven the country in pursuance of their own treacherous ends:
they are sowing discord, forging chains and are trying to wrest the
"WORKERS
power out of the hands of the workers and peasants. Former generals,
landowners and bankers are lifting their heads. They are hoping that
the people, driven to despair, will let them seize the power in the
.country .... " Thus begins one of the most vivid and forceful documents of the revolution, signed by Lenin and Stalin, and published on
May 31, 1918, in the Pravda.
A quarter of a century separates us from the time when the
young republic, born in the fire and smoke of World War I, fought
for its 'life. The German army began its offensive on February 18,
1918. At the beginning of May the Germans occupied 'allO'f the
Ukraine, the Crimea and Byelorussia. Field Marshal Eichhorn set
up his residence in Lipki, one of the loveliest districts in one of
the loveliest cities of Europe--J<iev. General Krasnov held sway
around the Don. Denikin at the head of 1Ihe "Volunteer Army" was
marching on the Kuban with Yekaterinodar as his objective. In
Georgia the Mensheviks were in control, while the Germans, whom
they had mvited, ruled in Tiflis and were nearing Baku.
In the summer of 1918 't!hetowns of Novo-Nikolaevsk, Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Ufa, Penza, Samara, Simhirsk and Yekateninburg were
in the hands of the insurgent . Czechosl'ovak corps. ~n Siberia a
Whiteguard government 'Was being set up. A counter-revolutionary
uprising took place in Yaroslavl. There was unrest in the countryside. Famine and disease joined forces with the counter-revolutionary
forces agatinst the central regions oIf ·the Soviet country.
The very ground seemed to be rocking and: crumbling underfoot.
The people exhausted by three years of war, ibled white, tortured
by hunger and devastation, took up arms once again to fight for
their honour, for liberty, for land.
The huge pincers of the counter-revolution were dosing in on
Moscow and Petrograd, The enemy was advancing from north and
south, from .east and west. If Jl:hese'pincers had closed, the Soviet land,
deprived of 'its food resources, would have been iQlbligedto defend
itself on all fronts against the combined forces hostile to the revolution. The last stronghold of Soviet power on the road of the German invaders and of General Krasnov armed by them was a city
on the Volga knciwnas Tsaritsyn .
. The heavy ring of the enemy encirclement was about to close at .
Tsaritsyn. The great strategists. of, the great Revolution were fully'
aware of this. In >ad'dition to everything else, Tsaritsyn 'blocked the
path of German imperialism to the Caspian Sea, to Baku, to .Messopotamia, Arabia and Iran.
'
It was in the sultry month of August. The thunder of the guns
grew louder every night. Krasnov's forces were driving toward
Tsaritsyn. Toward the middle of the month the situatlon became
critical. Krasnov's forces readhed the Volga north and south of
Tsaritsyn, surrounding the city.F:ighting
raged in the suburbs of
Gumrak, Voroponov, Sadovaya. At night the streets were Ht up by
searchlight beams. Factory whistles sounded the alarm and workers
from the Dummeau munitions plant, from the huge Maximov Bros.
Sawmills and ·the Nobel oil refineries came by the thousand to
defend their city. The workers became the iron core of the Tsaritsyn
defences. Here, side by side 'with the Tsaritsyn prcletarians,
fought
tlhe men of the Communist Division, consisting mainly of miners and
iron and steel workers from the Donetz Basin. They had fought their
way to Tsaritsyn repulsing the Whiteguard forces that harassed them
day and night, rebuilding literally with their life's Mood .the shattered bridge across the Don under artillery fire and joining the Tsaritsyn workers in order to share with them the titanic job of defending. the city. Subsequently the Rogozhsko-Simonovsky workers' regiment formed in the MO'ilCOW Guzhon and Dynamo plants came here
too. Stalin and VoroshiIov were here. .
August 15, 1918, was a critical day dn the defence of the city.
To many the situation seemed hopeless. At .7 p.m.on 'August 15 the
Military Council wrote over the signatures
Stalin and Voroshilov:
"The Council of People's Commissars and all revolutionary
neighbours are following with tense interest and all iPossible support
the heroic struggle of Red Tsaritsyn for the most vital interests of
the whole of Soviet Russia and for its liberation from the incursions
of the Krasnov bands.
"The salvation of the Red city depends on the continued staunchness, discipline, conscientiousness, endurance and active initiative of
Soviet circles.
"The city is still in a state of siege."
The help expected from Astrakhan did not arrive. A counterrevolutionary uprising had flared up in that oity. A similar action
had been scheduled for 2 a.m, on August 18 in Tsaritsyn itself, biJJt
the plot was discovered by the Cheka. The Soldier of the Reoo'ution;
th~ Red Army newspaper, informed its readers in a special issue on
of
August 21: "A big Whiteguard plot has been <brought to light in
Tsaritsyn. The most prominent of the conspirators have been arrested
and shot, Nine million rubles 'Were found in their possession. The
plot has been nipped in the bud due to measures taken by the Soviet
authorities. Take care, traitors! Merciless retribution awaits eaoh and
all who harbour evil designs against the Soviet workers' and peasants' government."
Krasnov's forces did all in their power to capture Tsaritsyn and
to disrupt Soviet rule from within. But the city held out. At the cost
of great sacrifice, .bloodshed and nervous tension, by the almost
superhuman effort of the workers and by the iron wiI.l of Stalin,
the first onelaught of the enemy forces was repulsed, the ring of
encirclement w,as hreached and communication lines restored. The
Lugansk and Siversk workers' regiments fought valiantly. Alyahyev's
armoured train sped back and forth, appearing now on the northern
and now on the southern sector of the front. The Tsaritsyn workers,
the members of the Young Communist League and of the Communist
Party suffered heavy casualties. The Red artillery pounded the enemy
day and night.
On August 22 our forces occupied the villages of Pichuga and
Yerzovka. On the night of the 26th our. units captured the Kotluban .
railway station, seizing trophies and smashing Mamontov's headquarters. On that day Stalin wired .to Parkhomenko in Moscow: "The
situation at th~ front has improved. Bring all you have received immediately. Stalin." It is, of course, impossible to give a conseeu!Jive account here of all the events of the first and second encirclement of Tsaritsyn in 1918 land of the Denikin-Wrangel campaign'
against Tsaritsyn in 1919.
When one thinks of the Iife of this city, of its grim lot and the
noble part it played in the difficult early days 'Of the Soviet state,
one gets a clear picture of the main features of Tsaoitsyn's character
and destiny. There are men whose lofty destiny is the heavy burden
of war. Even if you chance to meet one of these men somewhere
in /the Itheatre,at an art exhibition, or at home in shirt sleeves and
house 'Slippers, you somehow divine from his swift, abrupt movements, from the expression of gravity that suddenly comes over his
face, from some calm authoritative word he lets drop, that sooner or.'
later this man is destined to endure great privations, to live on soldiers' hardtack and suffer the trials and tribulations of frontline life.
Cities, like human beings, have their own destinies. It fell to ~he
proud lot of 'Isaritsyn-Stalingrad,
theoity
which stands 'on the
great Volga divide !between the north and. ;the south, the city behind
whose back stretch the sands and steppes of Kazakhstan, and whose
broad bosom is turned to the west, towards the rich .granaries of the
Don and Kuban, to be the stronghold of the revolution in the fateful
hour of the nation's history.
Twenty-four years have passed since Tsaritsyn, standing firm
against the onslaught of' the enemy, prevented the dark forces of
reaction, advancing from the north and from the south, from joining
up and, dropped like a mighty axe upon the Germans sending them
reeling hack in the midst of their headlong drive.
Two decades ,0£ peaceful development have passed, The trenches
around Gumrak, Voroponovand
Beketovka are grass-grown. Trees
spread their bnanohes where baggage carts once lumbered. Many of
the veterans who took part in the defence of Tsaritsyn have passed
away. The once black hair of the worker-volunteers has become hoary
with age; and the barefooted youngsters who ran around among
the smoking field. kitchens of the Red Army men, who gathered
spent cartridge cases and played at war where war raged, are
grown men, fathers of families, and noted citizens of the Soviet
state.
The people of Stalingrad developed rapidly and so, too, did the
city itself during the years of peaceful Soviet life. The huge Dzerzhinsky Tractor Plant, the Red October Works and the Barricades
Plant employed tens of thousands. A shipbuilding yard and a power
station were built. Old factories and works were reconstructed and
scores of new plants sprang up. In two decades of Soviet government, the city which at the turn of the century could 'boast of only
two high schools, one library, one orphanage and four hundred raverns, acquired soine splendid
institutions of higher education
(engineering, medical and pedagogical) with noted professors and a
student body of fifteen thousand, scores of training schools and hundreds of other schools, libraries and museums.
The streets where sandstorms and dust had roamed at will were
paved with asphalt. A green 'belt, twenty kilometres wide, with
hundreds Of hectares of orchards, lanes (If maple 'and chestnut trees
grew up around the city. Squat one or tw-o-storey houses and crooked
streets were replaced by tall, white buildings, modern thoroughfares
and spacious squares with beautiful monuments, trees and bright
flower beds. Hundreds of solicitous hands swept, cleaned and watered the streets of Stalingrad, and from a city of sandstorms,
Stalingrad became a city of pure Volga air, a city of sunshine and
health.
Seen from ithe Volga at night Stalingrad looked like a gigantic,
sixty-kilometre garland of dazzling electric lights from the illuminated signs over stores and theatres, cinemas, circuses .and restaurants. ,Music, amplified by. loudspeakers, wafted over the Volga. The
people took pride in their city, loved it, and rightly so, for Stalingrad had become one of the most beautiful oities in the Soviet
Union, a city of industryend
.learning, of bright sunlight and vast
spaces, the city on the Volga.
The people of Stalingrad were particularly Tond of .their city
because of the hard work, the sacrifices and jnfivations its construction had cost them. Those 'Werememorable decades. Now In wartime
some of the people who went through ilihis period d£ peacetime construction look !back on it es ,a calm and 'cYoudless idyll. That, of
course, is not the case. Conditions rwere mot eatSyin those years of
intense labour; our country weathered '11'0 few storms, and the great
plans of collectivization and industrial'ization were not carried
through I:i~htly.
The people of Stalingrad remember the grim period when the
Tractor Plant, 1he (first giant of the F1irst Five-Year Plan, was born.
Abroad this construction undertaking was watched with cold hostile
eyes. How many difficulties and failures were experienced, what
superhuman efforts of will, what mental strain went into it!
The whole country followed the construction j ob in Stalingrad
with lunabated interest, rejoicing in its successes and sorrowing at.
its failures. On June 17, 1930, the plant was opened. Now began
the period when the tintricalle technique of conveyor production,
utterly new to Russia, had to be mastered. This involved further
difficulties, a new and tense struggle. The foreign ,press prophesied
the collapse of the young plant. They wrote: "In view of the failure
of the Stalingrad Tractor Plant the Soviet Union will again be
obliged to buy tractors abroad." The big and small conveyors were
constantly stopping and holding up production. During the first year
the IPlantput out 1,002 tractors in all; in 1931 production had leapt
to 18,410' tractors, tlhe following year to 28,772, and soon 50,000
tractors were rolling off the conveyors annually. The difficulties had
been left behind. The favourite of the Soviet people, the first giant
of the First Five-Year Plan, was working at full capacity,
When excursion steamers approached the lovely white 'city on
the ,Volga the passengers beheld thousands of windows glittering in
the sun, emerald green parks and gardens, heard the hum and l'ively
bustle of traffic. They saw besides the black smoke of industry curling
skywards above the three g,iganti<: factories: the Tractor Plant, the
Red October Works 'and the Barricades Plant.rand through the smoky
windows of workshops they caught glimpses of sparks as m;ol'ten
steel poured from the ladles. They heard lfhe heavy rumbling of
machinery, like the thunder of waves on the seashore. 'I'his was Red
Tsaritsyn, Stalingrad, impressing on people's minds that it was aware
of its destiny as the Russian fortress on the Volga, 'ihat ilt had not
forgotten the grass·grown trenches at Gumrak,alt
Voroponov, 'at
Sadovaya and Beketovka, and that it was ready 'again, if need be,
to play the part it had played in its glorious past in a fateful hour
of the nation's destiny •
. . . In the aftemoon
of August 23, 1918, the workers of the
Miners' Regiments of the Communist and Morozovo-Donetz Divisions,
acting 'on orders of Voroshilov, hunched an offensive Ion the oerrtral
sector of 'the front 'in the vicinity of Voroponov and hurled back the
enemy that had been besieging the city,
Exactly twenty-four years later, at 5 p.m., on August 23, 194,2,
eighty heavy German tanks and columns of mobile infantry broke
through to Stalingrad's first-born-e-the Tractor Plant. Simultaneously,
hundreds of enemy bombers released their loads on the residential
districts of Stalingrad. This ..was the first onslaught of the fascist
hordes in 'their frantic drive eastwards ita the Volga.
The city was ablaze, shrouded in smoke from which huge
tongues of flame shot skywards. It seemed as though the two decades of
peaceful labour between the first German occupation 'of the Ukraine
and the Don and this sec~nd German invasion had never been. Once
again, in the smoke and din of battle, Red Tsaritsyn-Stalingrad,
the city of grilm and Illurrrious destiny, rose to make a stand.
There can he no comparison between the force of the German
onslaugiht in August 1942 and the force of the attack launched by
Krasnov's itro(}ps in ,1918.. The powerful impact of the 'tank divisions,
the ,terrific fire of thousands of guns and mortars, the vicious air
raids cannot be compared even with 'the most devastating Mows struck
in the first World War. The art of warfare has changed completely
since Ithat time. The 'battlefield did not look like this then; the .battles
were not directed thus, there were no barrages of fire like this. Now
tank-borne and mobile troops maneeuvred SWiftly. Battles raged in
the ail; such as no one could ihave imagined in'1918. The sky and the
ground co-operated, and huge masses of men and materiel were transferred swiftly by air from one sector of the front to another. Today
things are done on a bigger scale with more punch, faster.
Only one thing has remained unchanged-the
people. One would
not think that it was the men 01 another generation who now went
out Ito defend Stalingrad ; the stout hearts tof .a great people, the
hearts of Yakov Yerman, Nikolai Rudnev and Alyabyev did not
stop beating twenty-four years ago. When those eighty German tanks
suddenly appeared near the grounds 'of the Tractor Plant and hundreds .ofaeroplanes
strafed the residential quarters of the city, the
workers of the Tractor Plant and the Barricades Plant went right
on working. The plant produced 150 guns >in a single night while
80 'tanks were repaired between August 23 and August 26.
That first night, hundreds of workers armed with tommy guns and
heavy and light machine guns, took up positions on the northern fringe
of the factory .'grounds. There they fought shoulder to shoulder with
the gun crews of the heavy 'mortar batteries commanded by Lieutenant. Sa.rkisyan, which had been the ofirst to hold up the German
tank colllmn.· They fought side by side with the crews of anti-aircraft
guns commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Herman, half of whose guns
tackled the German dive bombers while the other half opened pointblank fire ,at the German tanks, There were moments when the blast
of bursting bombs drowned out all other sound and it seemed to
Lieutenant-Colonel Herman that Lieutenant Svistun's battery, which
occupied a forward position, had been silenced by the co-ordinated
action of the German planes and tanks; but soon he again heard the
measured firing of the anti-aircraft guns. The ba.ttery held its ground
for a whole day, although all communication with the regimental command post was cut.
In the evening 01£ August 24, four enen rnanaged 1to carry their
wounded commander, Lieutenant Svistun, to safety. They were the
sole survivors, All !Ilheotrher members of :tlhegun crews had .peen
killed. The first onslaught of the enemy, however, had been re-.
pulsed. The Germans did not succeed in taking the city in their stride.
Fi~hting began at the approaches
to the city, in the very. streets
and squares of the city itself, in the workess' suburbs and the sites
of Stalingrad's giant plants.
Fighting has been.raging in Stalingrad itself for seventy days-one
hundred days if one includes the battles at the distant approaches
to the city. The i~mortal names. of scores and hundreds of commanders and men should be engraved for all time in the history of the
Land of the Soviets+the names of sharpshooters Chekhov and Zaitsev; the names of the thirty-three heroes who repulsed the attack of
a column of heavy tanks; the names of the worker-volunteers Tokarev
and Polyakov; of Krylov, Commissar of a tank-buster unit; of flyers,
tankmen, mortar-gunners and infantrymen; of the' woman, steel-smelter-Olga
Kovaleva; of Sergeant Pavlov, who, together with his platoon, has been holding a house on lone 'of the main squares .of Stalingradfor fifty days. This house is called "Pavlov's House" in official orders and despatches, It is thanks to the blood which these men
are shedding, to their iron will and valour, that Stalingrad is holding out
The losses sustained by the German army are venormous, the
number of killed and wounded approximating 200,000. Thousands of
15anks,over a thousand guns andaircreft
have been converted into
heaps of metal 'scrap. The losses in materiel can be made up; new
herds of German soldiers earl be driven to the slaughter, but there
is no power on earth that can return to the Germans the three months
they lost, no way at all of re-establishing iIlheoriginal tempo of the
summer offensive. The tactical success oIf the ,German summer offensive has not been crowned by la major strategical .result. The advance
east and south has been stopped. The Volga stronghold has held out.
The city that has chosen as its ,proud and difficult 101 that of being
'the stronghold of the ;Russian revolution, the city that succeeded in
stemming the onslaught of the enemy in the first year of the existence
of the Soviet Republic, has now, on the occasion of its twenty-fifth
anniversary, once again, played a decisive part in the course of the
Great Patriotic :War.
.
And now this city lies before us in ruins, some of which are still
smoking and warm, like corpses not yet grown cold; others are frigid
and gruesome. At night the mOODlights up the gutted bUlIclliigs. and
the stumps of trees mown down by shells. In the cold greenish moonlight the desolate asphalted squares .glisten like 'ice-beund lakes; and
the huge dark patches of the craters made byhigh-e~T~S:ive 'bo~bs
look like holes in the ice. The 'shell.hatter~d factories ~tand silent;
no smoke curls 'from the chimney-stacks, and the flo~er'beds which
once ornamented the factory grounds look like burial mounds.
A dead city? No, Stalingrad lives! Even during the short lulls
in the fighting, life is astir in every wreckedhouse, in every factory,
Keen-eyed snipers are ever on the lookout for the enemy; shells,
bombs and cases of cartridges travelalong the communication trenches
in the ruins; observers ensconced in the upper storeys watch every
movement of the enemy. In the basements commanders are Iporing
over their maps, orderlies are typing despatches, members of the
Political Staff deliver talks to the men, newspapers rustle, sappers
are hard iat 'Work on some Clanger/ous assignment.
.
The ruins only seem to be deserted, empty, dead, But suddenlya
German tank moves cautiously around the corner of a house. Almost
instantaneously' a tank-buster who has been keeping vigil day and
night operis fire IOnthe fascist machine. From mhe .window of one 'Of
the houses a German machine-gunner, who is covering the tank
opens fire at the ;brick wall which protects illle tank-huster, One of
our snipers, covering his friend, ahe jank-buseer, 'opens fire on the
German machine-gun neit born Ithe second floor of a neighbouring
house. Evidently the German is wounded, or possibly killed-at
any
rate the machine gun is silenced. Ina flash German mortars begin
to explode and red brick chips fly from the wall of the house in
which our sniper is concealed. The Germans were avenging 'their machine-gunner. Our observer reports the locatioi: of the Geri:nan battery,
and the Soviet guns, which up till now have maintained
silence,
in their emplacements !behind the windows and <the front doors (If
houses, open fire. In the meantime, the German tank has beaten
a hurried retreat and has vanished around the corner. The, sniper,
the ta~k-buster and the light artillery quickly change .thelr positions. This is what happens in the rare minutes of a lull in the
fighting.
But most often the ho-uses, the squares 'and :tJhe factories are 'all
inferno of roaring gun~and bursting shells and bombs. Life is not
easy in Stalirrgrad just now.
I have in front of me a leaf torn from a notebook. It is a. pencilled 'report only recently received at Battalion Headquarters from
one of the company commanders. Here is the text:
"Time: 11.30 hours.
"First Lieutenant Fedoseyev of the Guards.
,:
"The situation is as follows: The enemy is trying .to surround
my company, sending tommy-gunners to my rear, but so far all his
attempts have failed. The Guarasmen are holding their ground. Men
and commanders are fighting like heroes. Although our ranks are
thinning, the enemy will pever penetrate our lines. The country will
ring with the fame of the 3\ra ,Rifle Company; 'as long as the cornmander is alive the fascist .swine will not pass. The commander of
the 3rd Company is in difficulties. He Isdisabled, deafened and weak,
feels dizzy, an;doan hardly stand on his feet; his nose is bleeding
badly. But in spite of all difficulties the Guardsmen of the 3rd
Company will not yield an inch. We'll fight to the last for the City
of Stalin. Our Soviet soil will bea graveyard for 'the enemy. I have
faith in my men .and subordinates. Kalaganov."
No, the great city has not died! Heaven and earth tremble at .the
thunder of our big guns; the pghting is just as hard as it was two
months ago. Tens of thousands of living hearts beat evenly and
strongly in the houses of StaIingrad. They are the hearts of Stalingrad
workers, of Donetz miners, of workers and peasants fnom the Gorky,
Urals, Moscow, Ivanovo, Vyatka and Perm Regions. Against these
brave hearts the German attacks have been shattered, for these hearts
are the most loyal in the world,
Never was Stalingrad so grand and beautiful as it is now. Reduced to ruins, it stands acclaimed by the freedom-loving peoples of
the whole world. StaIingrad lives, Stalingrad fights on. Long live
.Stallngrad!
November 5, 1942
Stalingrad Front